What does it mean for something to be “Objective” or “Subjective”?
Definition and explanation
The terms “objective” and “subjective” are thrown around kind of a lot.
Often when people say something is “objective” they mean it is trustworthy; sometimes they mean it is indisputable, or obvious. Sometimes “subjective” is used to mean touchy-feely, or unscientific.
All these casual usages are outgrowths of a core philosophical distinction that is not quite captured by any of them. Here we’ll give an explanatory sketch of this distinction, which has less to do with how sure we can be of something and more to do with understanding the underlying nature of different subject matters.
The philosophical meanings of “objective” and “subjective” are not confined to the academy, however; they are also at work in everyday statements like the following:
“That climate change is happening is an objective fact.”
“There is no objective fact about whether or not something is beautiful. The matter is subjective.”
“What constitutes a rational argument is, ultimately, subjective.”
“Suffering is objectively bad.”
What do these statements mean? Notice that they are all about claims, or answers to questions: that climate change is happening; that some particular thing is beautiful; that a rational argument is one that has such-and-such features; that suffering is bad. In different ways, the expressions in the list are saying something about these statements and the states of affairs that make them true or false.
To say that a statement X is subjective is to say that what underlies X, what makes X true, is ultimately a matter of the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, or other mental states of a person (or a “subject”).
For example, if what constitutes a rational argument is subjective, then perhaps a particular string of claims will count as a rational argument if and only if some relevant person thinks, feels, or believes that it is a rational argument. We say “perhaps” here because sometimes it is not quite that simple. Something is subjective if it depends ultimately on a configuration of someone’s mental states. Another, more complicated way of satisfying this condition in the case of a rational argument is to say that an argument counts as rational if and only if some relevant person’s beliefs about other arguments entail that it is a rational argument (even if they don’t believe or feel that it is). What’s important is that at the ground level, a subjective statement’s truth depends on facts about the beliefs or other mental states of some relevant person.
Because there are multiple people in the world, many of whom may have different views on what counts as a rational argument, etc., if whether an argument is rational is subjective, then an argument can be rational for some people and not for others. “Is argument Z rational?” will, then, have no unqualified answer. The answer will depend on whose perspective we are using to assess the rationality of the argument.
This may sound a bit strange, but it is common to think that at least some things are subjective in this sense. Whether something is a rational argument may not be subjective, but whether something is beautiful plausibly is. The aphorism, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” is essentially saying the whether or not something is beautiful is subjective. For example, according to this view a painting being beautiful depends on whether the viewer (or someone else, such as the artist) finds it beautiful—that is, on whether they have the thoughts, feelings, or other mental states corresponding to finding it beautiful. If beauty is subjective in this way, then if I find something beautiful, it is beautiful—for me. At the same time, it may not be beautiful for someone else. We may think that whether or not something is delicious, fun, or surprising are all subjective matters in this sense.
To say that a statement X is “objective,” in contrast, it so say that the thing that makes X true is not a mental state of a person.
What makes it true that climate change is happening? The fact that average temperatures on Earth are rising. Temperatures rising is not a mental state of a person, but a physical state of affairs. What makes it the case that climate change is happening has nothing to do with the thoughts, feelings, or beliefs of anyone. Because of this, it doesn’t make sense to say that climate change is happening for me, but not for someone else. Most things that science deals with are objective in this sense.
What about when people say that suffering is objectively bad? They mean much the same thing as they do in the climate change case, though it’s harder to tell here whether or not they are right. To say that suffering is objectively bad is to say that its being bad does not depend on the thoughts, feelings, or other mental states of anyone. No matter what anyone thinks or feels about suffering, it is still bad, on this view. If “suffering is bad” is true objectively, there is a difficult question about what thing or state of affairs makes it true—that is, what plays the role analogous to average temperatures rising in the climate change case. This question is a major topic in the philosophical study of metaethics. But whatever it is that makes suffering bad, on this view it is not a mental state of a person.
What, then, would it mean to say that “suffering is subjectively bad”? This would be to disagree with the objectivist about the badness of suffering, and to assert instead that suffering is bad in virtue of someone’s mental states, e.g., their beliefs about suffering. Just as something is beautiful if and only if someone finds it beautiful, the subjectivist about the badness of suffering would say that suffering is bad only if someone finds it bad in some way, or their other beliefs entail that it is bad, etc. Thus suffering might conceivably be bad for some people, or in some time periods, but good for others, or in other time periods. (That is, good even “in itself”, and not just as a means to some other good thing, such as strength.) The objectivist about the badness of suffering would deny this possibility, and say that suffering itself is always bad, no matter what people think.
“Intersubjective”
What, then, does it mean to say that something is intersubjective? Whereas an objective statement depends for its truth on the mental states of no one, and a subjective statement depends for its truth on the mental states of someone, an intersubjective statement depends for its truth on the mental states of multiple people.
An intersubjective claim is grounded in something that is spread across minds, such as consensus or discord. For example, if I ask: “What is the value of a share of Google’s stock?” the answer depends on what people collectively think the value of a share of Google’s stock is. What a single person thinks about the value does not determine the value, nor is the value determined by some other factor besides mental states. Other factors, such as Google’s quarterly earnings, might influence the value, but because the value of a share of Google’s stock is the price that people are willing to pay for it, the value is ultimately determined by the collective thoughts and feelings of traders as a group. Thus, the value of stocks is intersubjective.
One could also think that whether or not something is beautiful, bad, or a rational argument is intersubjective. What would that mean? In the case of beauty, it would mean that whether a painting (say) is beautiful depends ultimately on what some group of people thinks of it. There are many ways of filling this claim out. Perhaps something is beautiful only if everyone thinks it is; perhaps it is beautiful if everyone can be convinced it is; perhaps it is beautiful if art critics think it is. In each case, we would say that whether or not something is beautiful is intersubjective.
Subjectivity, objectivity, and intersubjectivity are tricky concepts, and the words are used in many different ways. The sketch we have given here is simplistic, and it leaves out many details and complications.
For example, statements about people’s minds, such as “Obama likes dogs” are subjective according to our definition, because they depend for their truth on facts about minds, but the statement seems objective.
A complete account of objectivity and subjectivity will have to accommodate these cases, perhaps by saying more about what the relationship between the content of the statement and what makes it true has to be like for a statement to be subjective.
Still the main points, we hope, are clear: objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity are features of facts or statements, which (perhaps among other things) specify what kinds of things—mental states of one or more people, or non-mental phenomena—are the ultimate grounds of the truth of the fact or statement at hand.
Also check out:
1. Postmodernism, Owlcation
2. The Fact-Opinion Distinction, The Philosopher’s Magazine
3. Moral Realism, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy